Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art; use the zoom or download icons under the image.
Though I’m not quite as taken with her work as I am with the paintings of her contemporary, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, I do admire Labille-Guiard’s skill with paint, and with chalk drawing.
At the time she and Vigée Le Brun were members of the Academy, they were two of only four women admitted at any one time.
This is the kind of highly refined self-portrait that artists used as a promotion piece, demonstrating their skill as a portrait painter to prospective patrons.
In this case, however, it may have been more, a statement that women artists should have a place in the French Royal Academy that was not limited to a token representation. She certainly makes a good case for it.